Using mock data, or test data, is commonplace in many technical areas, such as application testing and report demonstrations. Test data is also useful for agile software development. In some cases, large volumes of test data are used to make testing more meaningful. Test data that approximates real-world production data improves the quality of the testing system. However, in many cases, an actual production environment is not available to provide real-world data for copying or modeling.
Some large-scale software products include test data generation and feeding mechanisms. Such mechanisms may install or uninstall test data. The feeding mechanisms may input the test data to the testing system. However, these mechanisms are often manual processes. As such, the work may be tedious and error-prone. Some test data tools merely insert data into a database. As such, the tools are run every time test data is needed. Further, software applications delivered with the tools included potentially implicate legal issues relating to whether specific uses are in compliance with license rights provided with the tools. Moreover, users must be trained to learn third party tools and to comply with legal requirements, increasing costs.